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How to calculate the real cost of Creative Cloud

Cnet did the maths when Creative Cloud was first released, and two years down the line we think this still holds true – the extra services, the increasingly short lifespan of devices and software versions and the massive amount of time you’ll save all make Creative Cloud a winner for bean counters and creatives alike.

Free storage

If you (or any members of your team) move between sites a lot, Adobe Creative Cloud‘s 100GB of free, online storage per user is a bit of a godsend, allowing you to store ongoing work in the cloud rather than on physical drives that you have to lug around when you’re on the road/make sure you don’t leave on the train (we’ve all been there). It also allows you to share work automatically with other members of the team, so they can pick up new jobs or amends as soon as you request them, rather than having to wait for you to get back on site.

It includes the cost of font management software

A lot has been said about Adobe Creative Cloud giving you access to more apps (and therefore the chance to bring more work in house), but we’ve not seen much written about TypeKit. This font management solution used to set us back about £100 a year, but is now included free with Adobe Creative Cloud, so you can deduct the cost of a font management solution from your existing software spend.

The beauty of TypeKit – aside from the fact that it gives you access to a library of easily searchable, web-friendly fonts – is that it will sync fonts between your home and work machines (or multiple business machines) for more seamless multi-site working, and there are no plug-ins or servers to manage, so it’s not going to take up your IT team’s time, either.

Increased out of hours work…

We’re not saying that all companies are sinister and determined to trick their employees into doing oodles of unpaid overtime in order to hit unrealistic deadlines, but, well, most design agencies we know do have insane deadlines, and the only way to meet them is for a few brave souls to go above and beyond the call of duty.

The fact that users are able to access Creative Cloud apps, services and shared storage from multiple devices not only makes it more likely that they’ll be able to pick up jobs or approvals after hours, it actually makes that fact far less invasive – rather than being trapped in the office till sun up, you’re now able to review and edit projects on the go, or upload new versions to the team’s shared storage from wherever you happen to be.

…and the end of endless file transfers

Because Creative Cloud apps are designed to work seamlessly together, different departments in your agency can now share files more quickly and easily, without spending hours transferring, transcoding and worrying about version control, meaning less time watching the loading bar and more time doing billable work.

Oh, and if you ever take on 3D work, or would like to start doing so, there’s now a free copy of CINEMA 4D Lite included in After Effects, which has a two way dynamic link with Maxon’s leading 3D software, so changes made to a model in one programme show up instantly when you open it in the other.

You can bring more jobs in-house

Whether you want to take on new types of project, use new tools to refine pitches and win more business (just like our customer Pearlfisher did recently), or simply bring your freelancers in house so you can keep an eye on them, Creative Cloud allows you to bring cross-disciplinary work in-house and develop new skills without a risky upfront investment in new software (you’re getting the entire Adobe range for slightly more than the cost of Creative Suite Design Standard), so you can try new things without putting your cash at risk.